like men in the discharge of a terrible but necessary task.
Nineteen months later we were celebrating the return of peace. Armistice Day witnessed an unprecedented outburst of joy. We poured into the streets, giving an exhibition of gayety which children might have envied. "The war is over," we kept repeating, as if we could not say the happy words often enough.
Ten years have passed. With them has gone the riotous feeling of Armistice Day. Now we continually hear the question: "Is it over?"
True, the fighting is over. But we are still in the economic shadow which loomed blacker and blacker as the war cloud lifted. It has been said that the true close of our Civil War was not Appomattox but the panic of 1873, eight years later. Looking back upon our era, what event will the future historian select as marking the real end of the conflict which began in 1914?
The end of the war on its emotional side may be said to have been reached with Germany's admission to the League of Nations with the approval of France. To see those two nations side by side in an organization whose avowed purpose is the substitution of open and peaceful methods for the secret processes culminating in war which have been the rule hitherto is as gratifying a development as could be wished. Yet
